Comments on: Do we need new languages for parallel processing? http://insidehpc.com/2009/06/08/do-we-need-new-languages-for-parallel-processing/ HPC News Without the Noise for Supercomputing Professionals | insideHPC Sun, 19 May 2013 10:46:54 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 By: Damien http://insidehpc.com/2009/06/08/do-we-need-new-languages-for-parallel-processing/#comment-168932 Damien Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:19:25 +0000 http://insidehpc.com/?p=5472#comment-168932 I think the right approach for HPC is incremental if it's going to play nicely with the all the applications we'd like to have on top of it. Maybe for dedicated Top500-style apps a new language is justified that will get you another 10% on the FLOPS, and perhaps that's how a new language will mature and make it's way down to us mere mortals. It also depends on your definition of HPC. Is it the Linpack benchmark or the ability to scale up in size or up in speed for whatever problem you're trying to solve? In the second more general case new run-time libraries like Intel TBB combined with existing MPI on C++ will deliver more bang for less buck than a whole new language, platform and learning curve. I think the right approach for HPC is incremental if it’s going to play nicely with the all the applications we’d like to have on top of it. Maybe for dedicated Top500-style apps a new language is justified that will get you another 10% on the FLOPS, and perhaps that’s how a new language will mature and make it’s way down to us mere mortals.

It also depends on your definition of HPC. Is it the Linpack benchmark or the ability to scale up in size or up in speed for whatever problem you’re trying to solve? In the second more general case new run-time libraries like Intel TBB combined with existing MPI on C++ will deliver more bang for less buck than a whole new language, platform and learning curve.

]]>